Читать книгу The Canadian Readers, Book V - John Miller Dow Meiklejohn - Страница 11

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It might be truly said that now I worked for my bread. It is a little wonderful, and what I believe few people have thought much upon, that is, the strange multitude of little things necessary in providing, producing, curing, dressing, making, and finishing this one article of bread.

First, I had no plough to turn up the earth, no spade or shovel to dig it. Well, this I conquered by making me a wooden spade, as I observed before; but this did my work but in a wooden manner; and though it cost me a great many days to make it, yet, for want of iron, it not only wore out the sooner, but made my work the harder, and performed much worse. However, this I bore with too, and was content to work it out with patience, and bear with the badness of the result. When the corn was sown, I had no harrow, but was forced to go over it myself, and drag a great heavy bough of a tree over it to scratch it, as it may be called, rather than rake or harrow it. When it was growing, or grown, I have observed already how many things I wanted to fence it, secure it, mow or reap it, cure and carry it home, thresh, part it from the chaff, and save it. Then I wanted a mill to grind it, sieves to dress it, yeast and salt to make it into bread, and an oven to bake it in.

I had long studied, by some means or other, to make myself some earthen vessels, which, indeed, I wanted sorely, but knew not where to come at them. However, considering the heat of the climate, I did not doubt but if I could find any clay, I might botch up some such pot as might, being dried by the sun, be hard enough and strong enough to bear handling, and to hold anything that was dry, and required to be kept so. And as this was necessary in preparing corn, meal, etc., which was the thing I was upon, I resolved to make some as large as I could, and fit only to stand like jars, to hold what should be put into them.

It would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how many awkward ways I took to raise this paste; what odd, misshapen, ugly things I made; how many of them fell in, and how many fell out—the clay not being stiff enough to bear its own weight; how many cracked by the over-violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; and how many fell to pieces with only removing, as well before as after they were dried; and, in a word, how, after having labored hard to find the clay—to dig it, to temper it, to bring it home, and work it—I could not make above two large earthen ugly things (I cannot call them jars) in about two months’ labor.

However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them very gently up, and set them down again in two great wicker baskets, which I had made on purpose for them, that they might not break; and as between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I stuffed it full of the rice and barley straw; and these two pots being to stand always dry, I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the meal, when the corn was bruised. Though I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made several smaller things, with better success, such as little round pots, flat dishes, pitchers, and anything my hand turned to; and the heat of the sun baked them strangely hard.

But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to hold what was liquid, and bear the fire, which none of these could do. It happened after some time, making a pretty large fire for cooking my meat, when I went to put it out after I had done with it, I found a broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard as a stone, and red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised to see it, and said to myself that certainly they might be made to burn whole, if they would burn broken.

This set me to study how to order my fire so as to make it burn me some pots. I placed three large pipkins, and two or three pots, in a pile, one upon another, and placed my firewood all round it, with a great heap of embers under them. I plied the fire with fresh fuel round the outside, and upon the top, till I saw the pots in the inside red-hot quite through, and observed that they did not crack at all; when I saw them clear red, I let them stand in that heat about five or six hours.

I slacked my fire gradually till the pots began to abate of the red color, and, watching them all night that I might not let the fire abate too fast, in the morning I had three very good (I will not say handsome) pipkins, and two other earthen pots, as hard burnt as could be desired.

After this experiment, I need not say that I wanted no sort of earthenware for my use; but I must need say as to the shapes of them they were very indifferent, as any one may suppose, when I had no way of making them but as the children make dirt pies.

No joy at a thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine, when I found I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I had hardly patience to stay till they were cold before I set one on the fire again, with some water in it, to boil me some meat, which it did admirably well; and with a piece of a kid I made some very good broth, though I wanted oatmeal and several other things to make it as good as I would have had it.

My next concern was to get me a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn in; for as to the mill, there was no thought of arriving at that with one pair of hands. After a great deal of time lost in searching for a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look for a great block of hard wood, which I found indeed much easier. Getting one as big as I had strength to stir, I rounded it and formed it on the outside with my axe and hatchet, and then, with the help of fire and infinite labor, made a hollow place in it, as the Indians in Brazil make their canoes. After this, I make a great heavy pestle, or beater, of the wood called the iron-wood. This I prepared and laid by until I had my next crop of corn, which I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound into meal, to make my bread.

My next difficulty was to make a sieve, or searce, to dress my meal, and to part it from the bran and the husk; without which I did not see it possible I could have any bread. All the remedy that I found for this was, that at last I did remember I had, among the seamen’s clothes which were saved out of the ship, some neckcloths of calico or muslin; and with some pieces of these I made three small sieves, but proper enough for the work. And thus I made shift for a good many years; how I did afterwards, I shall show in its place.

The baking part was the next thing to be considered, and how I should make bread when I came to have corn. First, I had no yeast; but as to that part, as there was no supplying the want, I did not concern myself much about it. But for an oven, I was indeed in great pain. At length I found out an experiment for that also, which was this: I made some earthen vessels very broad, but not deep, that is to say, about two feet in diameter, and not above nine inches deep. These I burned in the fire, as I had done the others, and laid them by. When I wanted to bake, I made a great fire upon the hearth, which I had paved with some square tiles, of my own making and burning also; but I should not call them square.

When the firewood was burned pretty much into embers, or live coals, I drew them forward upon the hearth, so as to cover it all over, and there I let them lie till the hearth was very hot. Then, sweeping away all the embers, I set down my loaf or loaves, and turning down the earthen pot upon them, drew the embers all round the outside of the pot, to keep in and add to the heat. Thus, as well as in the best oven in the world, I baked my barley-loaves, and became, in little time, a good pastry-cook into the bargain. I made myself several cakes and puddings of the rice. I made no pies, neither had I anything to put into them, supposing I had, except the flesh either of fowls or goats.

—Daniel Defoe.

From “Robinson Crusoe.”